Gaming tournaments, such as poker tournaments are a very popular form of both entertainment and gambling. The World Series of Poker, watched by millions every year on television, is the most famous of all gaming tournaments. In this event, hundreds of poker players enter the tournament and play against one another for millions of dollars in prize money until only one player remains. Most poker and other gaming tournaments feature this same basic format, wherein each player, is out of the tournament once eliminated and may or may not be compensated based on that individual player's overall performance (or placement finish).
In recent years, there has been tremendous growth in the area of internet poker tournaments. In this new venue, players from around the world can play in a gaming tournament without the need to be physically present in the same room. Nevertheless, the websites that offer internet gaming tournaments invariably follow the same format as the live gaming tournaments. Often, the main differences between live play and internet play is merely the number of overall players involved in the tournament and the players' physical location. Many poker players thoroughly enjoy and even prefer playing in a poker tournament over playing poker in a non-tournament environment. The popularity of poker tournaments is often due to the potential for large monetary awards for a high placement finish as well as the relatively low cost of entering the tournament. This is especially true of internet poker tournaments, where entrance fees are typically lower than live poker tournaments.
Regardless of the venue however, once a player is eliminated from the tournament his or her interest in the outcome of the tournament is either greatly reduced or eliminated altogether. It is often the case that once eliminated from a tournament, the player will either leave the casino or leave the website. The primary reason for this lack of interest in the outcome is that the moment a player has been eliminated from a tournament their placement finish and equivalent financial award (if any) is determined immediately. There is simply no financial or competitive incentive to wait around.
A need therefore existed for a new method for playing a team gaming tournament that allows players the opportunity to form teams of one or more players in order to allow a team's performance in a card game tournament to be dependent on both the performance of each individual member of the team as well as the number of players on each team so that once an individual player is eliminated from a tournament that player still has a personal interest in the outcome of the tournament based on the performance of his or her teammates.